Knowing how and to which activities economic and human resources are allocated is one of the main difficulties for companies, especially SMEs that lack the necessary infrastructures and tools to have objective and real-time control. He Cluster of Innovation in Container and Packaging, the project 'IMOP. Advanced model for the automatic allocation of labor to the manufactured product', which has focused on solving all these deficiencies together with the companies MESbook, TST, CLR and Gráficas Lersi, in addition to the collaboration of the Valle del Juguete Cluster of Innovative Companies (CEIV).
In the presentation of the results of this project, held at the headquarters of the company Industrias Alegre, Jesús Pérez, director of the Packaging and Packaging Innovation Cluster, has highlighted that "IMOP seeks to promote the economic development of companies through digital transformation, being a low-cost and highly autonomous solution".
Specifically, in this project a factory personnel location system has been developed with automatic allocation of hours to the manufacturing order, through the combination of 4.0 technologies. Until now there was no system that used wireless technologies for this purpose in factories. In this line, the new development represents an innovative solution for indoor location, a tool capable of learning and correcting the location of the subject.
In this line, Diego Sáez de Eguílaz, managing partner of MESbook, has confirmed that in the tests carried out in the collaborating companies it has been shown that this initiative can achieve savings of between 50.000 and 100.000 euros in indirect labor (MOI) and in general expenses.
In addition, from TST Advanced position calculation and correction algorithms have been developed that allow companies to know the time invested in each of the projects. Francisco Alcala, CEO of this company, has underlined that "our contribution, through our latest generation technology based on Bluetooth Angle of Arrival (BLE AoA), has been the perfect fit to cover the indoor location needs of factories". With the intelligent technology developed by TST, it is possible to calculate, in real time, the effort invested in each of the jobs, discriminating situations not attributable to real effort, such as "momentary passes of the worker to another job and keeping the worker registered in the post despite non-computable absences such as those due to collecting material or giving occasional help to another colleague”, he explained.
Actual implementation of the project
All these innovations have been implemented in the two companies collaborating in the project: CLR, specialized in direct and alternating current geared motors; and Lersi graphics, specialists in packaging in different sectors such as food, fruit and vegetable, meat and cosmetics.
"In our day to day we have many jobs that are manual, and depending on the product we work with, the actual hours dedicated to the project vary, since there are materials that are more expensive to handle," he highlighted. Ricardo Perís, director of operations at Gráficas Lersi, who has continued explaining that through different tablets assigned to work tables, they can monitor the different processes, adapting to the demands of their day to day.
A positive vision that from CLR they also share and this has been emphasized in his speech Gonzalo Sobrino, company project engineer, highlighting that "we have obtained an improvement in effectiveness and productivity, but that is not all because thanks to these improvements we can know the costs and times of our processes and thus eliminate those tasks that do not add value".
Visit to Alegre Industries
To end the presentation of results, attendees have been able to see the facilities of Alegre Industries, visiting the injection area and the additive manufacturing area at the hands of Jesús Ibáñez, KAM PACKAGING Company.
In addition, Amparo Vázquez, director of R+D+i at Industrias AlegreIn his speech, he explained some of the company's novelties such as advanced additive manufacturing in which "we have spent years researching to make it a complementary process to injection"; or its custom-made packaging unit, Hybrid Box, designed with folding walls that also incorporates an interior system that makes it possible to dispense with the usual non-returnable protectors.
Finally, the IMOP project has been co-financed by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism (MINCOTUR) through the second call for the AEI of 2022 within the framework of the Next Generation aid and the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
